The many styles of pancit:
Local dish comes in delicious varieties

﻿The varieties, it seems, are endless. There’s pancit bihon, made with thin, translucent noodles. Pancit canton with yellow egg noodles. There’s pancit guisado (vegetables), pancit molo (soup), buko pancit (young coconut) and even pancit palabok (noodles in gravy).
All told, there are as many ways to make this noodle dish, of Philippine origin, as there are people who make it.
“You can use anything you want,” says Adelina “Ady” Ilog, owner and cook at Pagoda Fast Food at the Chamorro Village.
“Mine is the original-style pancit bihon, from Cavite.”
Ilog, best known for her lumpia and fried chicken, does a fair amount of business selling pancit as well. As simple as it is, she uses the same recipe every time and says that she has no reason to change it. Her customers like it just the way she does it, she says.
“But there are many ways. I think it depends on where you learned it,” she says.
The typical pancit dish consists of various vegetables such as cabbage, carrots and onions, evenly dispersed through a tangled mix of noodles. Many dishes also feature morsels of meat, most commonly chicken and pork, although shrimp, beef or any other protein is easily interchangeable.

Grease with oil a large pan or wok. Sauté garlic and onions.
Wet the pansit bihon noodles to soften.
Add the chicken broth, the shredded chicken breast and all the vegetables until cooked.
Mix in the pansit bihon noodles and add the soy sauce, cook for about 5 minutes or until the noodles are soft.

Salt and pepper to taste.
Serve hot with sliced calamansi on the side.
Source: http://www.filipinofoodrecipes.net/

The vegetables and meat are sautéed in hot oil, while the noodles get a hot water bath to soften. From there it’s a simple matter of mixing them up.
Bernadette Fabella, 31, of Dededo has been cooking since she was a little girl and has spent the last three years cooking for Laguna Best restaurant in Dededo.
She makes both pancit canton and pancit bihon as the house specialties, though she will make whatever customers want for special orders.
“It’s up to you. I just cook it,” she says, smiling.
Her version of pancit canton features the typical vegetables of cabbage, carrots and onions, as well as some crunchy celery. To it she adds pieces of shrimp and small chunks of Chinese sausage, which give bite to the meal as well as a sweet and piquant undertone.
“It’s very fast to make. Just five or 10 minutes,” says Fabella, who hails from Calaocan in the Philippines. “But this dish is not from my hometown. This is just my taste.”
Guam’s affinity for pancit led to other unique ways of preparing the dish.
For Jason Blas, owner and cook at Island Cuisine at the Chamorro Village, his daily service pancit is a spin-off of the dish learned from his grandmother and mom.
“Before, my grandma would use the original Sakura noodles to make the traditional Chamorro pancit. We use spaghetti noodles now,” he says. “Our customers like it. Some of them refer to ours as yakisoba, and we already know what they mean. And when my mom tried it, she gave it the thumbs up.”
Blas says his mom Teresita, who runs TLT’s Food Service, is a longtime caterer and has a discriminating tongue.
Blas uses the boiled spaghetti noodles and mixes in bunch of vegetables including cabbage and bright-colored carrots.
“And then I put in some shiitake mushrooms to give it some flair,” he says.
Blas says he knows of at least seven pancit recipes that his customers will order, and even though some might not re-order for several months at a time, they will always get the same taste that they remember.
“I believe that having good taste and consistency is the secret to good pancit,” he says. “Consistency is very important. Customers want the same taste, that’s why they come back. They expect it to taste the same tomorrow, next week, next month, even next year.”
Blas says pancit in general can even be used as a full meal.
“Some people don’t want rice; they would rather have all pancit. Others order it as a main dish,” he says. “And why not? All the components are there — their starch, their vegetables and the protein. It’s a complete meal.”